Uribe urges meeting with FARC, guerrillas say ‘No’

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Colombia’s Marxist FARC rebel group on Tuesday rejected a request from former President and primary opponent of peace with the group, Alvaro Uribe, to meet over their impending peace process.

Uribe on Monday had urged for a meeting with the guerrillas to achieve a “national agreement” on the revised peace deal due to be signed on Tuesday.

But, the invitation was rejected by FARC negotiator “Pabo Catatumbo,” who took the opportunity to accuse Uribe of trying to stall the country’s peace process.

According to Catatumbo, Uribe “never wanted peace but only the defeat of the FARC, which he could not do” and has been “stalling” years-long attempts to negotiate a way out of Colombia’s 52-year armed conflict.

Uribe has long been an opponent of the peace process and led the campaign to vote “No” on a peace deal in an October 2 referendum.

However in the aftermath of the defeat, the government and the FARC have met with sectors opposing the initial deal and drafted a second “final” deal in which issues concerning Uribe were largely ignored for being “unfeasible.”

Among the former president’s proposals was one that went as far as formally denying Colombia suffered an armed conflict and thus does not need a transitional justice court to deal provide justice to the 8 million victims of the armed conflict.

Uribe is one of 24,400 (former) state officials accused of crimes against humanity.

With the revised deal reportedly due to be signed on Tuesday and sent to Congress on Wednesday, Uribe has insisted on changes, a process which the FARC feel has already been completed.

“We have every disposition to dialogue with the government and the FARC on amendments to the aforementioned issues. For this dialogue we propose the advantage of the presence in Bogota of the leaders of the FARC.”

Senator Alvaro Uribe

Uribe and the “No” campaigners already met for seven hours at the headquarters of the Interior Ministry with the Santos administration but failed to reach political consensus.

With Santos looking to fast-track the signing and the ratification of the deal before they break for Christmas, it appears that there will be no further changes to that which was presented to the public already.

Uribe and his hard-line Democratic Center party have fiercely rejected this, claiming they were not given the opportunity to tackle some of the more contentious issues in the revised deal.

“The government has denied tonight the possibility of this national agreement on substantive issues,” said Uribe.

The continued staunch opposition of Uribe has been questioned because of his personal interest in the deal.

Uribe’s brother is currently in jail awaiting trial on multiple homicide charges that could be transferred to the Transitional Justice Tribunal. The former president himself is expected to be investigated over the executing of thousands of innocent civilians by the military under his watch.